Batman: Shadow Strike Origins
by YoshiSkittlez
Summary: When having problems at home, fifteen-year-old Rohan acts out against her parents in an act that will change her life forever.
1. Chapter 1

It was another rainy night in Metropolis but fifteen-year-old Rohan Booths had no plans of staying indoors. She and her family had just moved to Metropolis about a year ago from Gotham when her father was offered a better job by running a business on alternative energy. Rohan didn't know much about her father's business, and frankly she didn't care. The only words that her father and Rohan had were shouts of anger and frustration at one another, the most recent being when he had to collect his daughter from juvenile hall for tinkering with a police vehicle so that it would explode when the door opened. Thankfully though, the police officer was not hurt too badly and was able to catch Rohan a couple of the kids in her group, as the wiring they had stolen for the scheme was faulty.

Rohan had started hanging out with the 'wrong crowd' the very day she arrived in Metropolis as she very much resented her father for making her move. She had the perfect life in Gotham and even had a handful of really great friends, one being Bruce Wayne. They played together a lot as kids, and she was there for him when he had lost his parents at eight years old. As a seven year old at the time, Rohan's grasp on the concept of death was extraordinary for not having anyone close to her dying. She did, however, watch a lot of crime shows with Bruce when she would go to his house.

After the death of his parents, however, it was less and less of playing with action figures and watching tv and more and more of physical games of cops and robbers and detective and criminal. Bruce had this unnatural obsession with making things right which was clear in their little games as he was always the good cop or the detective, sticking Rohan with being a criminal in some way, shape or form. As the years went on, their games became more and more realistic, changing a game of 'catch the bad guy by tapping Rohan on the shoulder' to well thought out crimes that she would mimic, only to have Bruce try to figure out how she did it and how he was going to stop her. It was in these early years that Rohan had taught herself how to tinker with mechanical objects, start small fires and steal without being caught. She never stole anything from Bruce for keeps, however, as he always had her crime figured out before the day was through.

Rohan wouldn't have left that life for anything! And yet here she was, locked in her own room on a Friday night by her own father in the crap town that she wasn't shy to hate. She was drawn to the rougher kids at school that would skip class and rain all sorts of havoc on the school. Even detention couldn't hold Rohan as she simply opted to not go and would instead leave the school with her friends to go drink or try the experimental drug of the day. Often times her parents got a call home from the school with high concerns of her behavior and felt that it would be best to put her into some sort of disciplinary class, but her father was clear that he didn't want that kind of stain on the family name and assured the school that he would take care of it himself. That is…until she landed herself in Juvenile Hall.

Now with her bedroom door locked and her windows barred, she sat on her bed listening to the heated argument between her parents on different ways of parenting their troubled child. Rohan had heard just about enough when she heard her father mention military school and started looking around her room for a way to get free. She checked her bedroom door for what felt like the hundredth time as if by some magical force the door would no longer be locked. She turned back around with a frustrated groan and sat down on the floor with her back against the locked door. Something then caught her eye and as she looked at it closer, she found what looked like the butt end of a butter knife sticking out from under her bed. The wheels in Rohan's head started to turn as she crawled over towards the object and pulled the butter knife out from under her bed. There was still a bit of food on the tip, as it was very common for her to eat in her room; this butter knife just never made it back to the kitchen.

Rohan got back onto her feet and examined the doorknob. There were two screws on either side so with those gone, unlocking the door wouldn't be a problem. She put the very tip of the butter knife into the screw head, having some difficulty at first and for a split second she had thought that she had completely stripped the screw beyond repair. The screw eventually came loose and she grabbed it, untwisting it the rest of the way with her fingers. She eventually was able to do the same thing with the second screw and caught the doorknob from her side as it fell. There was a loud metal crash on the other side of the door however from the other side of the door knob and Rohan cursed.

She stood there, frozen as she tried to hear over the quick pacing of her adrenaline-shocked heart if her parents had heard. They were still arguing. Sighing in relief, she moved on to the next part of her plan. She stuck in the end of the now nearly useless kitchen utensil into the square hole that the doorknob had left and started pressing it against the gears inside and with a slight turn of the wrist, there was a _click_ and the door sprung open. Not wanting to wait a second longer in that house, Rohan left her room as quietly as she can and left out the front door.

"Easy as pie." She said to herself as she started heading towards her gangs usual hang-out area. It was raining pretty hard that night, nearly drenching Rohan to the bone by the time she came across the abandoned garage. The door was open, however, and she could see her small group of friends inside and screwing around with one another. "If you guys are going to be loud, you should at least shut the door." Rohan said as she entered the garage and dragged the garage door closed. "I could hear you all a block away." The attention of her friends went to her and broke out into wide grins and gave her a congratulatory 'welcome back'.

"Easy guys, I was only there for a day. What's worse than Juvie is being locked in your room on a Friday night. It's just criminal!" She exclaimed earning a couple chuckles from her friends. "Hey Ro, we were just getting ready to go tag that old warehouse up on Sharlem Drive, you in?" One of the boys asked. He was a bit older than Rohan, nearly eighteen years old and a senior in highschool. It was no secret that Rohan and him had an on-again-off-again kind of relationship, and he had made it no secret that he had taken Rohan's virginity a couple of weeks ago in an old abandoned bus.

Rohan nodded and grabbed a black and red bandanna from the workbench of the garage and tied it across her forehead, a trade-mark symbol of their small gang. "Yeah, we got any paint left over?" She asked. The second friend in the garage, another female, nodded and motioned to the backpack she was wearing. "It's not a whole lot, but it will get the job done." She said. Rohan didn't need to hear anything more and the three headed out of the garage, braving the heavy rain until they reached the warehouse. Once they found a wall that the rain hadn't gotten to, thanks to an overhanging pile of wood on the top of the roof, Rohan extended her hand in which the female friend tossed her a can of blue paint which she caught easily. The three teenagers began their work and while her two friends were more into the letters, Rohan was all about the images.

She only had to use one color as she quickly spray pained out a large capital letter X, and inside of it, sprayed in the image of two eyes and hands looking as if they were trying to break out of the brick wall. All of the negative space was used for the detail, as the blue was more of a boarder for the image. Just as she was starting to put the finishing touches on it, there was a loud, echoing noise that sounded very much like a gunshot and not even a second later there was the distinct sound of a bullet hitting the cement only inches away from her feet.

Rohan must have been looking at the right place at the right time, because she was able to see the bullet bounce off of the cement after leaving quite the indentation and from there was able to project in what direction the bullet came from. Her friends, however, did not even think for a second as they dropped their cans of spray-paint and went running, leaving Rohan alone with whoever it was that was shooting at them.


	2. Chapter 2

Rohan started running in the opposite direction that her friends had gone, curious to know who in their right mind would be out so late at night in a seemingly completely abandoned part of town. She wanted to believe that it was the curious side of her anyway, but deep down she had a feeling that the mentally ill part of her was praying for a type of release, a suicide-by-cop type of release. After the last couple nights she had, an end to it all might be just what she needed. There would be no more stress in her life, she wouldn't have to look at the disappointed looks on her parents faces all the time and hell, maybe they would even start to feel sorry for what they did when she was gone. She quickly shoved these thoughts out of her mind though as she was getting towards the smaller buildings that were around the warehouse, and as things started to get darker by the casting shadows of the buildings, the faster her heart began to pump and the more afraid she became.

Now walking down an alley that couldn't have been wider than five feet, Rohan walked as silently as she could, unable to help the occasional splashing sound from a puddle that had accumulated from the heavy rainfall. Suddenly, she heard voices and she stopped dead in her tracks, frozen with fear, and trying to make out what they were saying over the loud beating of her heart. There had to have been at least four men talking amongst each other, and they sounded angry. Some were shouting at one another while one of them tried to get them to follow him. It was with a quick and terrified realization that they must have heard the gunshot as well, and like her, were trying to find out where it came from! The voices were growing louder and louder as they came closer and closer to her. Rohan tried to move, but her legs wouldn't allow her, unmoving with fear. The voices were so close now that Rohan felt as if the group of men were right behind her. She closed her eyes tight, praying that whatever they were going to do to her would be quick and painless as she was sure that any form of guest was unwanted around these areas.

There was a sudden tug on her arm and the next thing Rohan knew, her small frame had been twisted around and her back was thrown against the brick wall easily knocking the wind out of her and forcing out a gasped cough for air. A gloved had shot to her mouth, covering it tightly to keep any more noise from escaping which only made her want to scream, but she had no air in her lungs to do so. As the stars started clearing from her vision, Rohan was finally able to focus on just what the hell had happened and saw a man nearly six inches taller than her pressing his body firmly against hers to keep them constrained to the wall as close as he could get them. In the darkness of the night, it was hard to see anything about the man other than his black silhouette, but as a group of men ran by with flashlights in their hands, still screaming and shouting at one another, she was able to get a glimpse of his face. Had her mouth been free, she would have gasped. It was Deathstroke.

It was a face she had seen many times in the papers, and not only that but on tv, magazines and even a few recent history books though not a single one was ever able to get a good shot of him. He was wearing a mask, one side orange and the other a shadowed black that blended in perfectly into the darkness. It looked to have been made out of a fabric such as a really thick nylon so it was easy to breathe out of considering there wasn't even an opening for the mouth. The orange side had a demon-like eye slot that was glowing an unnatural white through the darkness, but the black side had no eyepiece, just the solid fabric of black. The rest of his body followed suit with the split-color scheme of black and orange. His upper chest was armored very well with a leathery type material that had to have been at least an inch thick, making a bullet have a really hard time penetrating the armor if such an occasion arose. Under the harder chest armor was a simple black undershirt, plated with what looked like hundreds of layered pieces of black metal, much like chain mail, that continued down as far as Rohan could tell, all the way to his feet. His gloves were orange and his boots were orange, but all in all this man was in black, no doubt to hide himself in the dark of the night.

As soon as the group of men had passed, unaware of their location, the man removed his gloved hand from her mouth and she instantly took in a loud, deep breath and continued her cough attack that she had been forced to hold in. He took a couple of steps back, holding a pistol in his opposite hand pointed up towards the sky, as if he were waiting to fire it. From the smell, Rohan was able to gather that the very gun he was holding had recently gone off, and as it was the only gunshot she had heard that evening, she had come to the realization that he had been the one to fire that shot towards her and her friends.

"What the hell are you kids doing out here? Don't you know that this is Black Mask territory?" Deathstroke hissed at her, apparent that he was still trying to keep his voice down. Whether or not he had hostile intentions was yet to be seen. Rohan pulled herself off of the brick wall, rubbing the back of her head where it had made contact with the wall beforehand. She had heard of Black Mask before, he was a Crime Lord popular to Gotham City, all of the gangs around Metropolis knew about him of course, but no one she knew had actually seen him.

"How can it be his territory if he lives in Gotham?" Rohan asked a bit shakily, feeling with her hand a bump that was starting to form on the back of her head. Deathstroke turned back to face her, and had he not been wearing a mask she was certain that he would have looked very angry.

"He owns places all over the god-damn planet, all men like him do. And though he may not be here in Metropolis, he has plenty of thugs that would be more than happy to kill of a couple of punk-ass kids." He sounded angry, much too angry for someone that wanted to cause her harm in any way, and as the last few minutes of the evening replayed in her mind, she had come to the understanding that Deathstroke had saved her from the group of men.

"I-" Rohan stuttered, unsure of what to say or even what to do for that matter. "Your Deathstroke!" She finally ended up sputtering out, only able to think of saying the obvious. She didn't care if she sounded apparent though; it wasn't every day that you met someone famous, whether they were a criminal or not. Deathstroke either hadn't heard her, or he didn't care to comment because his back was turned to her once again and he was peering around the wall, no doubt looking for the group of men that had just passed them.

"You need to get yourself home, now." He said sternly in a demanding tone. Rohan just shook her throbbing head no and though it hurt to move her head, she kept a face.

"No way, I go back there and it's a one way trip to military school for me." She said feeling her blood boiling hot once again. The very thought of her parents trying to ship her off to be someone elses problem enraged her, it was as if her parents had just given up and no longer wanted her in their lives. Well so be it, if they didn't want her then she was done with them, completely.

"Fine, don't go home. Just make sure you ask the nice gentlemen to use a condom before they rape you. Or maybe you'll be lucky and they'll just skip to putting a bullet between your eyes." It was clear that he was done with her and that she was now becoming somewhat of a nuisance. He checked the street one last time and then started to walk away, leaving her for dead the way she saw it.

"Wait!" She hissed and ran after him.


End file.
